Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Privileging the Posterior

As Ian Fleming's Auric Goldfinger said, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." So when I heard Rush Limbaugh's recent comments about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown getting "anal poisoning" from slobbering over President Obama, I couldn't help wondering whether something was going on.



And indeed, here's Rush again, claiming "we're being told... we have to bend over and grab the ankles" (mind you, Rush would never assume such a position voluntarily).

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And here's Tucker Carlson, opining that Jim Cramer's wife must have been ashamed of "the butt sniffing he gave Jon Stewart."

And Carlson again, asking why Jon Stewart wanted to be John Kerry's "butt boy."



I don't want to make too much of this. Maybe there are examples of prominent left-wingers who share Limbaugh's and Carlson's apparent fixation. But after a while, given the richness of English and the variety of colorful references available to suggest subservience, one does start to feel that happenstance and coincidence might not be sufficient to explain things here.

Regardless, I'm sure that conservatives, who care deeply about maintaining standards of decency on the airwaves, will rise up to protect society by insisting that Limbaugh and Carlson find a way to exclude from public discourse their taste for anal idiom.

8 comments:

paul levine said...

Anal idiom, indeed.

Tucker Carlson has never gotten over Jon Stewart eviscerating him on CNN.

As for Rush, did you read Andrew Klavan's insanely over-the-top attack on liberals and his wild defense of Limbaugh in the L.A. Times? http://tinyurl.com/cpqgeh

The op-ed piece has already garnered 160 comments on-line...or roughly the current circulation of the newspaper.

Unknown said...

Oh c'mon Barry! Don't be so anal!

:-)

Just kidding B.

I just don't understand how anyone could find Rush's statements/position on the president to be insightful. I'm 26 years old and I'm starting to get into politics heavily and I find myself looking at Rush as if I were a kid watching a class clown/trouble maker. Shaking my head back and forth thinking, "Why say those things? It's only going to get you into trouble." When I say "trouble" I mean negative attention. How does he believe he's helping or inspiring ANYONE?

PBI said...

Barry,

As with so many of things that the leaders of modern movement conservatism scream and rant about, this is a simple matter of hypocrisy, and more importantly, projection. As Paul Levine accurately states, Tucker never got over the self immolation Stewart encouraged him to perform on Crossfire. Rush, meanwhile, has never forgiven himself for hiding behind his own troubled rectum to avoid service in Vietnam. (True story; swear to God. See here.)

Best,
Paul
Sensen No Sen

Toni Lea Andrews said...

Simple physics, really. Rush's obsession with Da Butt is the ultimate result of years of talking out of his ass. This has caused an unnatural proximity of brain matter and butt-matter and, I suspece, some cellular crossover.

In fact, he is thought by some to be the inspiration for the term "asshat."

Just sayin'

Anonymous said...

Joe Queenan had a nice opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday - about the O-Team's Active Measures style vocabulary preferences.

Anonymous said...

Miss USA pageant is guilty of violating Title VII in connection with Carrie Prejean according to the admissions of its employees "Perez Hilton" and Alicia Jacobs. Both judges have publicly confirmed she lost her shot at a job for pay because her answer to a question relating to a sexual preference was in opposition to her religious faith and family upbringing.

They basically asked an illegal question during this job interview (which was sure to piss off half the population no matter what she said) and determined her cultural background (though consistent with half the country) was "wrong".

Smooth move. Trump has deep pockets. Wonder if she'll go for it, or if she has any class to go with those looks.

TClark said...

As I stated over on the Amazon site. Where's the equal time for the incessant use of the term Teabagger to refer to people who participated in the Tax Day Tea Party protests?

I noticed Ms. Garofolo attempting to brand the tax protests as nothing more than redneck racists representing their hatred against a black President. Where was Ms. Garofolo when the Duke Lacrosse team was getting crucified in the media by black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and others. I might add that to date, not one of them has issued a formal apology to the young WHITE men who were falsely accused.

One of the reasons this country is so polarized is that we all spend too much time finding fault with each other instead of trying to find common ground. This country will never recover as long as we remain fractured.

Why don't we start a movement right here, right now, to stop the finger pointing and start trying to bring people together?

Barry Eisler said...

Thanks for the comment, TClark. A few thoughts in response (taken from your Amazon comment, but equally applicable here):

"And where's the commentary on Ms. Garofolo's and MSNBC's insistence on useing the term Teabagger's to describe people who participated in the Tax Day Tea Party?"

I imagine there's a fair amount of such commentary on rightwing blogs, but arguing for the equivalency of entirely tangential references to anal sex, on the one hand, and references to people who call for "teabagging" as "teabaggers" on the other hand, strikes me as specious.

"One thing about the left is they are always ready to point out the faults of the right but seem completely oblivious to their own shortcomings."

Is this quality really unique to the left? If not, have you not just exhibited it yourself?

"You, Mr. Eisler, are trying to associate all conservatives with Rush Limbaugh in an attempt to discredit ANY conservative ideas or beliefs."

In what way have I done so? There are plenty of traditionally conservative beliefs to which I adhere, and in fact my current beef with the GOP is that the party has been captured by radicals who are the antithesis of traditional conservatism.

"Should we likewise associate all liberal leftist with Perez Hilton and his Gay Facist agenda? I hardly think so."

I don't know who Perez Hilton is or what you mean by gay fascists. Does Hilton have a radio audience of 12 million? Has the head of the DNC and other prominent Democrats offered him craven apologies for offense? (see, for example, http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/photofeatures/2009/04/rushing-to-apologize.php?img=1 ). If so, your attempt to equate Hilton and Limbaugh is meritorious. If not, this is another specious argument.

So while I can't see how anything I've said could be read as an attempt to "discredit ANY conservative ideas or beliefs," I don't know why you would try to argue that Limbaugh is other than a prominent, powerful, influential Republican figure, and indeed representative of current Republican substantive orthodoxy and political tone.

"Why don't we stop trying to pick each other apart and start trying to find some common ground so we can work together to fix this country?"

I think your call for a search for common ground would be more persuasive if you had in any way acted on it in your post. If I've missed something -- if somewhere in your post is a search for common ground, rather than an attempt to pick each other apart -- please point it out to me.

That said, I don't know why pointing out differences and finding common ground would be mutually exclusive activities, or why the latter would always inherently be more valuable than the former. On various important issues, there are clear, unbridgeable ideological differences on which common ground is likely impossible except at a very high level such as, "We'll never agree on the substance, but we agree to battle this out at the ballot box rather than through violence."

Best,
Barry